Tag: events

The next regular meeting will take place at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada on Thursday, April 25 at 7 pm CST. 

Our speakers this month are Ross Robinson and Dan Payne. Ross is well known in the local aviation community as the owner of a Harvard and a B-26 Invader, which is now parked at the aviation museum. Dan was formerly the chief flying instructor at the Winnipeg Flying Club and a Transport Canada inspector but now is primarily a musician. Their bios are below. Ross and Dan will speak about their 1985 transatlantic flight in a piston single engine Rockwell 112 Commander, for the New York to Paris Air Rally.

Registration for this meeting is required at CAHS-MB.

The meeting Zoom link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

Meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. Donuts and coffee are included!

The next regular meeting will take place at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada on Thursday, March 7 at 7 pm CST. 

We are pleased to have as our main speaker John Crook. He will speak about de Havilland’s elegant DH-84 Dragon and DH-89 Dragon Rapide cabin biplanes. More information and John’s bio is below. John will be joined, virtually, by Nathan Delorme-Crabb, who will give us a tour of the DH-90 Dragonfly that he flies on behalf of a private collection. You can get a taste of his talk in this thirteen-minute video. Nathan will join us live from Britain.

Registration for this meeting is required at CAHS-MB.

The meeting Zoom link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

Meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. Donuts and coffee are included!

The next regular meeting will take place at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada and by Zoom on Thursday 25 January at 7 pm CST. 

Our speaker is retired University of Manitoba professor of engineering Ostap Hawaleshka. Ostap was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada in 2001 for his work in founding the Science and Technology Centre in Ukraine. He will speak about the Soviet / Ukrainian Antonov Design Bureau and their extensive line of transport aircraft, which include the AN-124 Condor and the AN-225 Mriya. The Mriya was the heaviest airplane ever to fly, with a maximum take-off weight of 1.4 million pounds. He previously spoke to the chapter in April 2011.

Registration for this meeting is required at CAHS-MB.

The meeting Zoom link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

Meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. Donuts and coffee are included!

The next chapter meeting will take place at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, 2088 Wellington Avenue, and by Zoom on Thursday, November 30 at 7:00 pm.

speaker this month is John Peden, who will speak about his father. Murray Peden was a Second World War RCAF bomber pilot. A Thousand Shall Fall, his autobiography, covered his enrolment, training in the BCATP, operational service flying Stirlings and Flying Fortresses with a Royal Air Force squadron, and his homecoming. It has been called “one of the finest war memoirs ever written”.

John was born in 1955, and is the eldest of Murray Peden’s three children (another brother who passed away in 2013 as well as a sister, who retired from her career as an M.D.). Winnipeg is his lifelong home. He graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba in 1979, and articled that year with the Manitoba Department of Justice. He went on to enjoy a long career with them as a Crown Attorney, only retiring in 2022. He is married with two grown children (and two young grandchildren).  He has had a lifelong love of music, playing the piano, the trombone, and the bagpipes. He still plays the pipes with his son in the St. Andrew’s Pipe Band of Winnipeg and dabbles in writing pipe music and teaching the pipes with the Lord Selkirk Robert Fraser Memorial Pipe Band.

Registration for this meeting is required at CAHS-MB.

The meeting Zoom link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

Meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. Donuts and coffee are included!

The next chapter meeting will take place at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, 2088 Wellington Avenue, and by Zoom on Thursday, October 26 at 7:00 pm.

The speaker this month is Hedley Auld, a local aviation history enthusiast who has researched the early history of the RCAF in Manitoba, in particular the Victoria Beach air station. 

Hedley Auld, born and schooled in Winnipeg, has degrees from University of Manitoba (Mechanical Engineering) and University of Oxford (Philosophy, Politics, Economics). He comes from a prominent family connection to aviation as his father, W. Murray Auld (1916–2015), was an RCAF Inspector in the Second World War and later joined MacDonald Brothers, rising to the role of General Manager of Bristol Aerospace Ltd. in Winnipeg.

Hedley retired in 2016 after a 37-year career with CN at its Montreal Headquarters in Economics, Financial Planning, and Marketing Planning, and in Winnipeg in the Grain Marketing business unit.

His keen interest in history has included membership in the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada and research on early aviation in Manitoba and the West. He has extensively researched the story of the Victoria Beach Air Station.

Victoria Beach, today a rural municipality noted for its cottage lifestyle, is located on a Lake Winnipeg shoreline, an ideal location to establish one of Canada’s first air bases. The Air Board of Canada (1919-1923), and, later, the Royal Canadian Air Force, operated flying boats from the Victoria Beach air Station, including Canadian-made Vickers Vedettes used for surveying, forest inventory and fire patrols.

In May 1921, 18 workers arrived at the new beach townsite to begin building the base on what is now the municipality’s sports field. Up to 60 personnel worked at the air station from May to October, including squadron leaders, pilots, photographers, and support staff. In 1926, the base was moved to Lac du Bonnet to continue the RCAF role in the region.

Registration for this meeting is required at CAHS-MB.

The meeting Zoom link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

Meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. Donuts and coffee included!

Our next chapter meeting will take place at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, 2088 Wellington Avenue, and by Zoom on Thursday 28 September 2023 at 7 pm CDT. Our speaker this month is Mike McAllister, whose topic is Supersonic Scandal: the Soviet spy ring at Avro Canada. Mike is a retired Millwright and a certified rescue diver with a keen interest in history. He has written for Discovery Channel, Eye Spy, Diver Magazine, and several other publications. He was a volunteer for the Toronto Aerospace Museum for ten years and has been interviewed on radio & TV on the Avro Arrow and about searches for lost aircraft  He is a member of the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association Dive Recovery Team. Mike will join us by Zoom, but it will be an in-person meeting at the aviation museum.

Registration for this meeting is required at CAHS-MB. Our meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. We provide the coffee and doughnuts. The meeting Zoom link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

Register at CAHS-MB.

Our meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. The meeting link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

**VIRTUAL MEETING**

Our next chapter meeting will take place by Zoom only on Thursday 31 August 2023 at 7 pm CDT. Our speaker this month is Roger Gunn, author of Masters of the Air: The Great War Pilots McLeod, McKeever, and MacLaren. His biography is below. Roger will speak on the lives of Andrew McKeever and Donald MacLaren, two of the three pilots described in his book Masters of the Air. McKeever was the king of the two-seaters in the Great War. He was also a squadron leader in the fledgling Canadian Air Force in 1918 and 1919. MacLaren on the other hand accounted for 54 victories in World War One and was Canada’s third highest scoring ace, next to Bishop and Collishaw. MacLaren was instrumental in the founding of Trans-Canada Air Lines in the late 1930s. Both McKeever and MacLaren led very interesting lives, lives which Roger will bring to life in his presentation. Roger spoke to our chapter about the third subject of his book, Alan McLeod, VC, in January 2022.

Registration for this meeting is required at CAHS-MB.

Our meetings are free and open to CAHS members and everyone interested in Canadian aviation history. The meeting link will be provided around two hours before the meeting. Please register early enough to receive the link.

Roger’s book is available via the CAHS website. The chapter also has a few copies for sale, for $25 each. I will provide free local delivery in Winnipeg. Please reply to this email if you’re interested in purchasing a copy.